In an unprecedented public exchange between India’s monetary authority and the country’s biggest bank, economists from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and State Bank of India (SBI) have locked horns over allegations of plagiarism in economic research. The clash, playing out on professional networking site LinkedIn, has sparked unease within policy circles given the stature of the two institutions involved.

The controversy began when Sarthak Gulati, Assistant General Manager in the RBI’s Monetary Policy Department, accused SBI’s research team of “verbatim replication” of sections from the central bank’s Monetary Policy Reports (MPRs) in recent editions of SBI’s widely-circulated Ecowrap publication without proper attribution.

“As professionals in the financial and economic research commun

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